(courtesy IMP Awards)
Season 2, E 1-5 review
One of Poker Face‘s great strengths in its first season was that even thought it never trivialised murder, which was always seen as an evil act in need of some form or redemptive justice – handed out, of course, by protagonist Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne who continues to delight in every scene) – it always had some fun with the flawed humanity of the people who committed the deed.
There was a gentle, amusing and yet comprehensively damning indictment of each and every guilty party, their “sins” made all the more apparent by the playful way in which the series treated their egregious, wholly self-beneficial transgressions.
In season two that playfulness has been turned up to 11 with state-of-the-art speakers and neon light string illuminatingly around it, almost to the point of moralistic absurdity; everyone is still as guilty as hell, hands soaked in blood and souls in tar, and they still all pay in one form or another, but their brokenness and indeed that of almost every person in the show, gets a healthy dose of levelling course of the more than faint sense of the ridiculous.
Take, for instance, episodes one and two, “The Game is a Foot” (and no, that is not misspelled) and “Last Looks”, both of which feature meta-loving TV series or films which add not so much to the plot as they augment the sense of the nonsensical, which frankly is trhe best way to describe how badly people behave at times.
By any metric, the way in which many of the characters in the show behave is full of stuff and nonsense, so rendering them as nonsensical makes perfect sense, but it works even more profoundly because by tilting the story into the realm of the hilariously fantastical – in one episode, Charlie accidentally trips on a substance, her visions rendered in colourfully amusing sequences, while in another, she sees into the soul of an alligator and it’s technicolour spiritual man – those people are illuminated even more damningly as objects of weakness and ridicule.
Which is fitting because for all its seriousness in terms of being a modern American gothic morality play, Poker Face is, and has always been mischievously funny, eager to parody the foibles of the human condition with gloriously comedic intent.
But this is comedy wielded as a weapon, and while all those visions of meditating crocodiles or children playing at policewomen on primetime TV might elicit some enthusiastic chuckles, and often a guffaw or fifty, by the end they have served their purpose at making everyone in the show who has committed some kind of terrible act, whether it is fully punished by the law or not, as objects of pity and ridicule.
Yes, we empathise with them to some extent because the writing is so clever that no one is a caricature and everyone has some penetrating truth to them, and we recognise how easily for the grace of God might we go there too in a moment of searing weakness, but in the end, they have done something wrong, whatever their original intent, and they must pay for it.
Such is the need for justice to be served in a morality play which, once again, is pretty much what Poker Face is.
Perhaps one of the most imaginatively executed episodes of the six watched for this review is “Sloppy Joseph” where the villain of the piece makes a good case, along with an unfortunately named gerbil, for the fact that “sin” is innate and not learned.
Even the ending of that episode has some fun with the form, with poor Charlie, who has yet to find a place in which she can settle down and stop running – the mobster arc, which finished off season one with a cliffhanger that doomed our protagonist to run for the hills once again, is finished with reasonably quickly in a deliciously absurdist but emotionally affecting fashion – learning that perhaps she is always going to be a victim of broken humanity simply because her gift of being able to tell when others are lying, will always drive people to act terribly no matter how deftly she uses it.
What is most fun about Poker Face is that in elevating the absurd and playing up the frailties of being human to a highly comedic degree, it hasn’t once sacrificed its role as a purveyor of justice, something we all long for but which often evades us sadly, and in so doing, makes us laugh and nod with sage recognition often in the one cleverly constructed scene.
Season two is proof that you can build on the promise of a sterling first season and make something even more wondrously good, and the great joy, at this point, is knowing that the journey with Charlie Cale has six more episodes to run (the last episode of season two releases 10 July 2025), and unless the TV gods have taken all leave of their absurdist mystery solving senses, a few more seasons yet.
Poker Face streams on Stan in Australia.
Catch up! Season 1, E6-10 review
(courtesy official trailer)
It’s a strange thing popping back into a show after long break.
In the case of Poker Face, the break was both not intentional and not because the show didn’t delight the hell out of me; it was simply that life got in the way and with streaming platforms overflowing with new and shiny “Watch me!” moments, getting back to a show after happily watching the first five skillfully-wrought episode, proved all but impossible.
Until now, that is when the arrival of season two and the presence of the irrepressibly clever Natasha Lyonne made me realise that I really need to first the last five episodes of a very fine season and ready myself for the 12 to follow in the newly-arrived season two.
What impresses after such a long break between episode groups – I watched the first five in the top half of 2023 after its release in January that year – is how well the series sustains the central mystery-of-the-week premise without once feeling stale and while juggling an ongoing arc where protagonist Charlie Cale (Lyonne), who has an uncanny ability to tell if someone is bullshitting up a storm, is on the run from some Las Vegas gangster casino operators.
It would be all too easy for the differently-themed episodes, which find Charlie laying low while working for everyone from a skilled but reclusive maker of costumes for monster movies to a drag race track amusement arcade or trying to stop the murderous plans of a pathological Wall Street bro, to feel like it’s the same idea on repeat but Johnson, with the aid of imaginatively clever scripts, performances which bring monstrous people to life while keeping them very flawed and human and a roster of guest stars who more than earn their stay, keeps them fresh and vibrant all the way through.
This is not simply a case of giving Charlie something to do while she evades Cliff LeGrand (Benjamin Bratt) who’s hunting her down on behalf of casino mob moss Sterling Frost Snr (Ron Perlman); these episodes explode how spectacularly evil people can be while pursuing the most base and ordinary of human passions.
If you have ever wondered how much a person could rationalise and justify in the cause of their own self-aggrandisement, then pay close attention to episodes six-through-ten of season one of Poker Face, which shows it is a lot.
A LOT.
One of the co-founders of a special effects company, played by Cherry Jones, will do anything to keep her company viable and hie reputation intact while an actress on the wane (Ellen Barkin in scarily icy form) has no compunction with killing all kinds of people if it keeps her career buoyant and her illicit man by her side.
We like to think of hopes and dreams as good and virtuous things but here they are, twisted and broken and malevolent, a million miles from the dreamy stuff of Disney, and far closer to the hellhole of darkly ordinary humanity which will do some truly awful things to keep a “dream” alive.
Charlie, of course, can spot their deception and deadly rationalisations a mile off, and it helps her not only to bring about some justice, episode-by-episode, in a society scarily absent of it much of the time, but to stay one step ahead of LeGrand and, as it turns out in a final episode which flips the table brilliantly not once but twice, tidying up season one and setting season two up very nicely indeed, to make herself valuable just before she’s back with a target on her back.
Poker Face is deliciously rich and meaningful morality play storytelling that balances arc and episode narratives with aplomb, which gives us a protagonist who’s vulnerably flawed but smart-as-a-whip and gloriously capable, and which knows how to keep things taut and tight and pell-mell fast while also able to stop and let some of that oft-featured humanity to sneak from the shadows into the revelatory light.
Poker Face season 1 streams on Stan in Australia.
Behind the scenes …